I always liked Ted Hughes take on Sylvia Plath's process which I came across years ago, and it really made me relax about my own outcomes and be more forgiving of my end results, whatever they may be:

Ted Hughes wrote:

Her attitude to her verse was artisan-like: if she couldn't get a table out of the material, she was quite happy to get a chair, or even a toy. The end product for her was not so much a successful poem, as something that had temporarily exhausted her ingenuity.

I think that quote is applicable to any artwork though, if you replace the word poem with whatever you may be working on!

I'm working on a short story and the ending is frustrating me SO MUCH right now and I rewrote a new ending again this morning and now I need some time away to look at it with a fresh mind later, but every time I read the above quote, I remind myself that I can take whatever I'm working on in a different direction if the one I planned just isn't working and maybe reenvision it somehow or just make it happen in a different way. I have a tendency toward rigidity but the creative process often makes me--or sometimes just forces me--to be more flexible in my ways of thinking, which is a good thing.

My squeeze and I built a wooden headboard with storage for our bed! He did most of the carpentry heaving lifting but it was a team effort. It wasn't the most sustainable or cheapest product either, but we got exactly what we wanted, which Ikea couldn't provide, and no labor exploitation along the way. Did manage to use up some old paint from the wall to paint the inside.

I bought a box of old finished models from ebay for about ten bucks. I've been using them to practice painting techniques before working on things I actually want to have look nice... You can see an attempt at a paint wash for simulating rust (it came out okay if i wanted things to look like they'd been sitting out in the open for years, but a little too intense for minor surface rust), some crappy lettering, and the whole things have been airbrushed to practice that.

After 20 months of "sleeping outside" the exhausts of my motorcycle are getting rusty.

I've decided to paint them with heat resistant paint because an original exhaust is hard to find or damn expensive for my (27 year old) motorbike.

Before:

Detail before:

After almost an hour with a rotating wire brush:

Next step is to do the exhaust on the left side, perhaps sand them with sanding paper to make it more smooth, spray paint them both, and figure out a way to get the exhausts up to a temperature of 320 F to set/harden the paint job.

I am working on crocheting a teddy bear. I am making it a zillion times harder for myself by using self-striping rainbow yarn, so in order to keep the colors in order, I have to reverse several sections of the pattern and flip between several segments of the yarn. I am planning to do the exact same pattern in a solid color when I finish this one, which will seem super easy once I've got this crazy rainbow thing done! Oh, the things I do for rainbows.

_________________Man, fork the gender card, imma come at you with the whole damned gender deck. - Olives Did you ever think that, like, YOU are a sexy costume FOR a diva cup? - solipsistnationblog!FB!

Next step is to do the exhaust on the left side, perhaps sand them with sanding paper to make it more smooth, spray paint them both, and figure out a way to get the exhausts up to a temperature of 320 F to set/harden the paint job.

So far the most of it just seems surface rust. I was surprised that a lot of the original (powder coat?) paint still seems to be intact.I would put the exhausts into the oven but they are too big for the oven.I don't know if the full exhaust comes up to the 320 F while driving it.

Today I meant to replace the very old front brake lines with new after-market steel braided hoses.

Got the wheel out, took a handle bar (clip-on) off, pulled a fork leg down so I could re-route the hydraulic clutch line (to correct a mistake from almost two years ago)...

Removed original (one into two) brake lines... and spend at least an hour to figure out how the three lines in the replacement kit would fit...couldn't figure it out so I gave up and used the original first line to the block that splits the line to two lines...but the two lines seemed too long.

Fitted stuff as best as I could and didn't fill the system with brake fluid as I had a feeling something was wrong and had a hunch that I'd have to disassemble it again.

Two hours after giving up and some searching on the internet it started to dawn on me that the replacement set wasn't what I had ordered, or that I forgot what I ordered.

I am now convinced I've got a set that is a two part front brake set to replace the original three part set-up and a rear brake hose. This means I can do a good deal of the three hour job again tomorrow.

(also notice the use of weight-lifter disks and a cast-iron cilinderhead to keep the rear-end down and the front wheel off the ground)

Here's the big project. I was building little models basically as practice for this one, which is a super-nice Japanese model of an obscure branch of the Panzer II line, the Luchs (or "Lynx"). It has a metal gun barrel and metal grills, and some pretty good tiny detail, including bits which are tiny enough to get stuck under your thumbnail if you aren't careful picking them up.

That's a test-fit-- most of the big bits aren't glued to one another yet because I need to prime it and paint the interior so it doesn't show up when you look through the grills on the back.

As I have whined many times on many different threads, I am stuck stuck stuck with the middle grade novel I'm (not) writing. I'm at around page 220 or so on the first draft, and I have really gotten nowhere in the last couple years. It drives me crazy, but my perfectionism, laziness, fear, and all-around shitty attitude keep me from accomplishing anything.

In my life, I've written tons and tons of stuff. But I've finished very little. I'm pretty good at having written. I'm terrible at writing.

It haunts me and makes me miserable.

But I really need to finish this and try to get it published before books-on-paper go away. So I've got, what, another year?

I'm still stuck on chapter one of my book. I keep re-working it because I feel like I need a really strong start to spring from but I'm also starting to think I should move on into other parts of the story and just leave the opening alone for now. I'll probably change it several times over between now and finishing (finishing could take years for me, too) anyhoo so I don't need to sweat it so much this early in the process.

I also have a couple of half finished and completed drafts of some new shorter ideas to work on when I need a break from doing the novel thing, but I'm basically making myself work on the novel now exclusively until I leave for my trip in June.

but I'm also starting to think I should move on into other parts of the story and just leave the opening alone for now. I'll probably change it several times over between now and finishing

Onward!

Woot! I moved on! Chapter 3 was revised this morning. And more small changes to chapter 1 and 2 because I can't leave well enough alone, but I won't kick myself about backsliding a bit on that. Onward, onward, dawnward!!!!

Also, I should add that at some stage in every dramatic prose project I think I have ever done (that winds up ultimately being completed - which to me is success), it goes through a black comedy phase which means there comes a time with every single drama-type manuscript--and always pretty late in the game of revising, too--where I'm about ready to throw up my hands because I'm frustrated and think it's junk and believe the only way to salvage all this work to make it a black comedy, because I can always write black comedy, or so I believe. So now "black comedy" is considered a phase of mine, just like the "thesaurus" phase used to be integral to every poetry manuscript I wrote. I no longer have a thesaurus phase when I write poetry though. I figure I'll grow out of the black comedy thing with more time and practice in my prose writing.

That said, I'm far, far away from any "black comedy" phase in this particular manuscript, but I'm sneaking little funnies and jibes in when I can, because who doesn't like to have a laugh and also as a sort of preemptive insurance, just in case a black comedy re-envisioning is in its future...

I love the variety of projects in this thread! I'm taking what seems like thousands of product photos in preparation for my online shop opening, which is taking forever, & there's still so much to do, but I'm hopeful for a June/July launch.